Improving Crawlspaces in New York Multifamily Buildings

Build your crawlspaces to keep energy losses to a minimum, while also keeping your pipes from freezing.

Crawlspaces were developed as an affordable foundation alternative to basements.However, cold-weather crawlspaces, such as those in New York State, present a variety of challenges: • limiting heat losses, both conductive, through the floor and walls of a crawlspace, and convective, via air flow through a crawlspace; • controlling evaporation from soil or concrete floors in a crawlspace, to reduce moisture, which can cause a variety of problems in buildings; • preventing cold floors in winter, and warm floors in summer, directly above a crawlspace; • preventing radon from traveling from the ground into a building through a crawlspace; • preventing freeze risks for piping located in a crawlspace; and • preventing the mixing of crawlspace air and house air, through leakage in ducts located in a crawlspace. During energy audits for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)’s Assisted Multifamily Program, energy auditors have been reluctant to recommend insulating the subfloor between ...